The Tapestation is definitely not for integration into a larger system. It’s automated in the sense that you can put a 96-well plate in the machine and it will work through those 96 samples in an automated fashion, but that’s as far as it goes. Agilent’s answer to full automation is the Fragment Analyzer FA5400. It has a full API and automated shelves for access with a robot.
I’m looking to add a FA5400 to a workcell for amplicon QC, but there are a lot of considerations that I haven’t fully fleshed out as of yet.
Our need is to QC short amplicons, we have an FA5300 so we tested out the cheapest kit that Agilent has (DNF-935) and it seems to be appropriate for the data that we need to collect. What’s unknown to me is how does the FA5400 perform in an automated system. Does it clog a lot, does it need a lot of attention for reagents, etc. Or can we put plates of running buffer on our system and just let it go for 10-15 plates at a time?
actually it is very easy to manage and maintain. If you keep enough buffer and do not let it dry then i never saw it clooged. Also the reagents can last for 24 and 72 hours depend on the reagent. It can definately run 15-20 plates easily.
I just spent over 60 days trying to renew a service contract because they simply would not respond. Maybe it’s just the N. America team that has customer support issues, but I wouldn’t recommend this system based on that alone. Beyond that, the lab technologists despise the protocol for running the instrument.
Same function, different software and reagents are the big difference. Tapestation uses cartridges akin to hematology slides and transfers samples which consumes one capillary of the slide. QIAxcel actually uses a really clever technology that employs an entire multi-channel pipette looking e-gel and runs the gels using that. However, the “comb” as they call it is massive and we often have issues aligning the starting point of each channel for runs which requires a bit of manual finesse.
The other thing is software - the Tapestation is so simple and provides a simplified metric - DiN - to assess how well a gel performed. The QIAgen software truly complicates every step of the process. It seems like the ceiling is higher in terms of analysis with QIAxcel but I had enough trouble just getting it to work with a few simple applications (peak calling, smear profiling).
I’m obviously biased towards the tapestation, but I just continue to have bad experiences (bad luck?) with QIAgen which fuels that trend.
That’s very interesting feedback, thank you @evwolfson.
I can see that the QIAxcel has a throughput of 96 wells and assess them in 30-50 minutes and 3000 sample runs cost about 700-800 GBP?
How does the Tapestation compare in these regards? (apologies if I missed this information in the above conversations)
Maybe an update from my side:
Concerning the costs, in the end, I decided against an automated system. Instead, we replaced the buffer system in our agarose setup (Der SuperBuffer, sorry a German link from “Lab journal”. It’s 8 g of SoOH + 45 g of boric acid in 400 mL ddH20 for a 50x stock.
The upside is, that is does not get hot even when run with really high voltage, so I can now run my gels for 12 minutes at 300V and get perfect separation at basically no costs since a student helper can do this.
However, to maybe integrate this into my system I think about building custom gel chambers and carriers for Hamilton Systems. At the moment my chambers are too large to conveniently fit into the system but that is only because they need to be big enough to be pipetted with an 8-channel pipette by hand.
So my idea is to drastically shrink the chambers in X dimension because I’m not limited in automation here and let the robot pipette the gel. Then I’d only have to take out the chambers with the samples and connect them to a power source.
I’ll keep you updated on how well that works
Hi @dominik.b
We use TapeStation, I think it’s one of the best options available, not least because of the nice user-interface and the fact that you don’t need to prime a chip and can reuse partly-used tapes.
you may also want to consider e-gels from invitrogen - they can be anythig from11 to 96 samples per gel which, at high number of samples, make them faster than the TapeStation. I’m not sure how the cost would compare per sample though.
@CamilloMoschner
I’ve used the QIAxcel system and the Fragment analyzer. There are pros and cons to both.
QIAxcel - required less time to get things going each run (less things to check and prepare, you load the PCR product directly…). Compared to the 12 cap Fragment analyzer, i think it was even a little quicker. Qiagen were also very invested in helping us (preCOVID), and that help was essential. That all said, the resolution was not as good as the Fragment analzyer, and there weren’t any options to scale it up (we wanted higher throughput).
Fragment analyzer has so many options - 12, 48, 96 cap - so it takes the same time to run 12 with a 12 cap as 96 samples with a 96 cap - so this can be really quick! The resolution is so much better, and you have more control over the options in software. The only part I don’t like is there is more instrument maintenance and sample prep vs Qiaxcel - which is fine for high throughput but time consuming if you run smaller sets.
Overall, if you need something for a quick look of small numbers of samples, I think the Qiaxcel will be fine (we used it for fragment analysis for species ID where fragments were 40 bp apart processing a few thousand samples a year). Anything larger throughput, or where you want higher resolution - I’d choose the Fragment analyzer.
